This is the view from the Hotel dei Fiori where we stayed in Milano. The block of apartments is typical of the housing in the city. The parking is typical too.
This was taken as we went from the hotel to the metro station to get into the downtown area. There is a “Milano” sign above us that the local kids modified.
This was our rental car, a Fiat Idea. The cars in Italy are typically very small. This is considered a midsize. More to come.
OK, I’m back home now, and I thought I’d do a few more updates on the citizenship drive: I got my mom’s amended birth cert with the apostille back from Michigan AND I got a receipt from California state telling me they got the birth cert request and it would be 12 weeks from when they issued the card until I should expect the thing back. Does this take a long time or what?? But at this point the only thing I’m actually waiting on is the original birth cert from Cali, so when that comes in, I should have all the necessary documents. The next step after that is to take them to the consulate and figure out if they will want me to file a petition in Rome for the adoption or not. I still don’t think it is necessary, but it seems like the government workers don’t want to take responsibility for saying OK to anything out of the ordinary. Hopefully it all turns out OK.
The flight home was uneventful. Long and uneventful. But we are all glad to be back…. except maybe Shelly…. she never wants to come home. I too feel like I’m just kind of biding my time until we can finally go. But it is nice to be back where I can understand everything natively. We plan on putting a few side links to our pictures but I also want to put some up here on the blog. I’ll give more info later. For now, thanks so much for your prayers, everything turned out fine. God bless.
dave